In the past, information concerning medical emergencies has been gathered in a variety of ways. Usually, a written report is completed by the technical personnel involved. This report is based on details concerning the sequence of events and the patient condition and progress from the time of arrival of the personnel until the patient's arrival at the hospital. It is also based on other information pertinent to this out-of-hospital event, including electronic signals indicative of the patient's medical state. Naturally, during the medical emergency, it is difficult to write down any relevant information that is not recorded. This means that much of the information needed to complete a report about the emergency must be recalled by the personnel involved in the emergency. In addition, any information that is recorded, for example, on a paper strip chart recorder, must be fully reviewed to be edited for the significant events and be correlated with non-recorded procedures applied to the patient.
Typically, the medical training of the personnel who treat the patient and report on the treatment ranges between 100 and 2000 hours. This represents a wide variety of skill in treatment and in the gathering of information, which can lead to inconsistent reporting of the medical emergency.
After the patient and attending technicians arrive at the hospital, the receiving physician often requires accurate information about the patient's condition as soon as possible. This need for information is particularly important in a cardiac emergency, where proper care must often be provided very quickly and where treatments such as defibrillation are often administered during the trip to the hospital.
In addition to these considerations, there are often legal requirements for providing reports concerning the medical emergency. The attending technician is usually allowed to practice certain medical procedures based on state laws and under standing orders from a physician who is responsible for medical control. Thus, in order to provide for acceptable medical control, the responsible physician must review the medical emergency in detail. This typically requires the physician to review the written reports, the patient's records, and other sources of information. Often the physician will find it necessary to interview the technician and/or other personnel to obtain an accurate understanding of the care provided to the patient.
One common method for gathering information and generating such reports is by using a tape recorder. Typically, such a tape recorder is attached to a piece of equipment that is used in the emergency, and pertinent information is recorded. In a cardiac emergency, the tape recorder can be attached to the defibrillator or a monitor and both the electrocardiogram (EKG) signal and the technician's voice recorded. The physician can then listen to the voices on the tape and make copies of the important and interesting portions of the recorded EKG signal. Unfortunately, this method requires a significant amount of a physician's time and effort to sort out the information to determine the care given to the patient.